Pinterest Revival, Slow Living, and Other Summer Trends and Insights
This summer turned out to be challenging for most professionals. Although many have already gotten used to their new routine, the inability to travel wherever you’d like for vacation to even get inspired by new places is frustrating. If not for the pandemic, at the height of summer, you would probably enjoy yourself at the sea coast or somewhere in the mountains.
However, each and every one of us will experience a different kind of summer this year. If you’re stuck at home and are looking for inspiration in everyday things and on the internet (as we do), we are here to help you find it. Explore the summer trends and insights that will spark your creativity and provide a better understanding of where the creative industry is heading in the second part of 2020.
Revive your old good Pinterest account
During the pandemic, Pinterest traffic reached an all-time high. People turned to it for inspiration and motivation during lockdowns but also to find out more about brands, and their products and services as well. The Pinterest stats show that 90% of weekly users make their purchase decisions on the platform. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Pinterest is a powerful marketing tool for businesses in 2020.
Pro tip: if you haven’t been active on Pinterest in the recent months, this summer is a perfect time to make a splashy comeback. According to the latest Pinterest report, people are looking for help on the platform now. They question what sports to choose while stuck at home. Are there any cool ideas for family leisure and activities with children? How do you stay well in uncertain times?
With access to relevant topics and quantitative data describing their growth, you can make the most of the platform having adjusted your content marketing plan to the needs of the audiences. You can also register with the Pinterest business account to grow your community but also boost traffic to your website. Moreover, Pinterest has its own analytics (like Facebook has) that allows you to track the effectiveness of your efforts.
To set up a business account and find out which tools really work, read this guide.
Break rules like you mean it
A founder of Nasty Gal retailer Sophia Amoruso, in her autobiography “Girlboss”, often refers to the latin quote “fortune favours the brave” and emphasizes that in order to succeed you should be bold enough to risk and disobey the common rules.
This summer, we suggest you heed her advice and break some design rules. To get inspired, start by exploring our annual Visual Trends Guide and pay attention to such trends as “Play on Optical Perception” and “Brutalism and Digital Decay”. They will encourage you to not be afraid of experiments and challenge your audience with unusual designs.
Tip #1. Instead of creating a neat landing page for your next project, surprise your audience with the “raw” look. Add minimum details and emphasize your content, making your viewers leave their comfort zone and pay more attention to the message you’re delivering.
Tip #2. If you choose to play on optical perception, try to break design rules creatively by avoiding typical layouts and classic types. Make your audience notice and appreciate your effort to win over their attention by challenging the flat nature of design.
However, coming up with bold types or unconventional layouts is only half the battle. Because of the endless stream of information and other digital noise here and there, your color choices should also help you stand out from the masses.
When working on your next design project or planning a holiday marketing campaign this summer, opt for colors that are trendy and flatter the eyes of the audiences. These could be “flame”, “saffron”, “refreshing green”, and “crystal white” that perfectly match together and make your designs look special.
As there are dozens of ways you can combine these colors together, we share 20 summer color palettes you can use for your seasonal projects.
Consider slow living lifestyle to be more than just a short-time trend
With more and more people burning out in the previous year because of hustle culture and constant uncertainties in every sphere of life, many opt out from the constant race for a better life and opt for stability and calmness. Slow living is going mainstream now but this tendency should come as no surprise. We could have foreseen it if we stopped for a minute and tried to grasp a bigger picture of the world we live in.
Tired from being “on alert” around the clock, this summer and beyond people will look forward to optimizing their lives, careers, and bodies. WGNS report says that the self-improvement market is booming and topics like wellness and self-care are on the rise at the moment.
As our stomachs need a break from food, our brains need time to process a large amount of information received every second. Clients slowly come to the conclusion that receiving information in portions might be the only way to deal with stress, anxiety, and fatigue. Having digital detox and paying more attention to basic human needs such as proper food, self-security, family, and friendship is an effective way to unload the brain for a while.
Danish psychotherapist and author Ilse Sand in her book “Highly Sensitive People” emphasizes the fact that sometimes procrastination is important if you want to be productive later. While you think you’re doing nothing, in reality, your brain is conducting massive work – it helps you process information.
For marketers and business owners, this knowledge might help better connect with their clients. Instead of overloading them with information through every available channel, your audience will much more appreciate your offer if you provide it to them at the right time and the right place.
Illustrate a different kind of summer with the cottagecore aesthetic
Instagram is a place where you can spot the rise of every new aesthetic. This summer, it’s the cottagecore, a style that romanticizes pastoral life and allows brands to conquer new audiences like Gen Z.
Although the cottagecore aesthetic appeared a couple of years ago, it became extremely popular during the pandemic. As staying in lockdowns in towns and cities was challenging for many, people decided to move out to the countryside and stay closer to nature. Their lifestyles became more relaxed but they did not give up on social media and documented every episode of their routine. An abundance of a rural theme on Instagram gave birth to the new trend – the cottagecore aesthetic – that perfectly describes how the summer of 2020 looks like.
As you can see, in 2020, most people are experiencing a completely different kind of summer. They’re spending more time outside the cities but also exploring local destinations with their friends and families. What this means is that visuals used to appeal to your audience should also be different. They have to be more authentic, honest, sincere, and ambient as well.
Stay on top of trends with your summer-related projects using visuals from our thematic photo collection.
Create more video content to engage with your clients
If you work in the creative industry, you know firsthand how hard it is to win over your clients’ attention in 2020. However, you can still succeed if you appeal to them with video content.
In recent years, the amount of businesses using video as a marketing tool has grown from 63% to 87%. The primary channels to share this type of content are social networks. Facebook and Youtube are the ultimate leaders by the number of active users but the launch of IGTV in 2018 has influenced the game a lot.
Today, people prefer vertical content over horizontal ones as they hold their phones or tablets vertically 94% of the time. Besides, 26% of people say they are unlikely to finish a video if they need to turn their smartphone horizontally to watch it. It turns out that with producing solely horizontal videos, you might be losing the attention of at least a quarter of your potential leads.
Pro tip: put more effort into creating videos and pay attention to vertical format to keep up with the times and trends. You can start by sharing short videos in Instagram Stories that turn out to be a powerful tool of communication with your target audience today.
Read about the best practices for designing Instagram Stories in our guide.
Final thoughts
Although we’ve already gone through the first half of the summer, there’s still time to refine your communication with your audience. Change the visuals, share some videos, and try to break the rules creatively to appeal to your audience and hold their attention just a bit longer with outstanding summer-related projects.
For more inspiration on the topic, read these articles:
— Creative Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Sales This Year
— Summer Color Palettes for Vibrant Designs
— 10 Photo Collections for Your Summer Projects (Marketing Ideas Included)
